Prompt: Write about a time when you realized that your perception of a particular food was based on a stereotype. Explain what the food was, what you originally believed about it, and where that belief came from. Then describe how your perspective changed after experiencing or learning more about the food. Be sure to include specific details about the moment your thinking shifted and what you learned from that experience.

 One food I had a stereotype about was Indian food. Before trying it, I thought Indian food was dirty and unhygienic because I had watched videos on Instagram and TikTok showing street vendors in India preparing food with dirty hands, old oil, and unclean cookware. These videos created a stereotype on me that made me believe Indian food was prepared in poor sanitary conditions. My perspective changed when I went to an Indian restaurant and actually tried the food instead of judging because of some videos I saw online. I was surprised by how delicious everything was, the mix of spices and flavors was phenomenal and my experience was completely opposite from what I expected from the videos I had seen. This experience taught me that social media is really good for creating single stories. Social media can sometimes only show one side of a culture which creates a fixed stereotype for the whole culture. It taught me to not judge based on what others say or what I see but rather on my own experiences, and if I don't have an experience, to simply just not judge.

Today in class we finished the worksheet from the Netflix documentary based on the food diversity in New Orleans and started working on a Writtable assignment and watched a short film on Chinese influence on the Mississippi Delta cuisine.

From the short film I was really surprised seeing these people from Chinese heritage that had been living for a few generations in the southern USA and had a really deep southern accent but still continued to celebrate their Chinese heritage through family gatherings cooking Chinese food but also embracing where they now lived, Mississippi and adopting it's cuisine by blending it with their traditional Chinese recipes.